F
ew, if any, job roles and positions within a
company have been subject to the type of upheaval that the Chief Information Officer (CIO)
has endured in recent times.
The marketing function perhaps, which has
had a plethora of new digital and social mediums through which to communicate, might come close, but
in more traditional business functions such as finance, the
rate of change is almost glacial by comparison.
Fundamental changes in the technologies underlying critical
business operations have forced CIOs to constantly adapt
to and learn about them, always looking for ways to incorporate them into the workings of the business in order to
make it more efficient and productive.
Without a doubt, one of the biggest shifts in modern business, and one which has impacted massively on CIOs, has
been that of cloud and mobility. CIOs are now needing to
manage employees’ ability to access company data on a
plethora of devices, and deal with all the privacy and security risks which BYOD entails.
“Ten years ago, these guys (CIOs) were worrying about
things like the mainframe computer,” says Steve Durbin,
managing director of Information Security Forum. “They
didn’t have users who would suddenly decide they’re going
to use their iPhone or tablet to access information.”
Throw social and big data into the mix as well, and suddenly you’re dealing with what’s been termed as the ‘Third
Platform’, an expansive range of technologies which impact
business in a major way and at a fundamental level.
As Hadley Baldwin writes on ComputerWeekly.com:
“If you are a CIO and spend most of your time thinking
about enterprise resource planning (ERP) programmes,
datacentres, networks and driving down operating costs,
your world may be about to change.
Software as a service (SaaS) and cloud-based applications
mean managing traditional back-office IT is no longer the
key focus of the role.
SaaS reduces costs and moves from fixed capital expenditure (capex) to variable operating expenditure (opex). It also
significantly reduces the effort and complexity of both traditional IT projects and systems support. This means time
and money is freed up in IT – and it needs to be directed
into customer-facing innovation.”
Companies have also nowadays started using the term
Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to indicate the major role
which technology is playing in this position.
They’re also using Head of Business Transformation, Head
of Business Process Change or Management, Head of
Service Delivery and even Head of Supply Chain, whilst in
some companies, the role of CIO is divided between two
people, or there may even be both a CIO and CTO at the
same organisation.
Perhaps it’s due to this familiarity with such key technologies and the way in which they interact with the business,
that we’re seeing a change in the status and importance
afforded to these positions within companies.
“As the role of the CIO has changed, what companies look
for in a CIO has changed too” says Chris Patrick, global
lead for Egon Zehnder’s CIO practice. “The demand for
the CIO is to be much more of an influencer, a shaper, a
business strategizer, than it has ever been.”
“The role is evolving rapidly and has fundamentally shifted
from where it started, to a role that is much more business-focused, and much more demanding” he adds.
Understanding the technology landscape as well as the
business implications of technology and the ways and
means of efficiently integrating it into business operations,
has naturally evolved into a role which plays a greater interaction with top management, the CEO and the board
of trustees.
“The CIO would rarely have met with a CEO because they
didn’t really have much to do in the way of the business
being run” says Steve Durbin. “Today, of course, CIOs have
much more say in what’s going on.”
As such, more and more CIOs are naturally moving into
CEO positions than ever before. They’ve gotten comfortable
with strategizing and interacting with top management in
their role as CIO, and their ability to see the bigger technology picture within the industry and combine it with making
their individual company more efficient and productive,
serves them well in a CEO position.
Due to the increasing presence of technology specialists
within the top levels of management, it has become the
norm to see CEOs, MDs and VPs with at least a moderate
level of technology knowledge, and many have much more
than that. Indeed, it’s difficult to navigate and strategize
successfully, as well as being able to identify future threats
and opportunities within the macro environment, without
knowing the technology landscape in which a company sits.
CIOs who are have successfully made the transition to
dealing with Third Platform technologies and are now adding value to their businesses and leading customer innovation are understandably becoming increasingly sought-after,
driving up the price of securing high quality CIO talent.
It remains to be seen how the role will change in future.
What is in no doubt however, is that the CIO position will
continue to be shaped by macro-economic and environmental forces. How CIOs and the companies which employ
them choose to respond, is entirely up to them.
Sources:
http://www.cioinsight.com/it-news-trends/slideshows/how-the-cios-role-will-change-by-2018.html
http://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/The-rapidly-changing-role-of-the-CIO
http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/The-changing-role-of-the-CIO-in-the-business
http://www.cio.com/article/2691752/cio-role/how-the-cio-role-is-changing-as-business-needs-evolve.html
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